When she was elected as Brazil's first woman president four weeks ago, much of
the country put her success almost entirely down to the support of her
predecessor President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

But Ms Rousseff has started to shape her Government this week by announcing several appointments to her cabinet and when she takes office on January 1 her in tray will include a range of pressing issues on which she could make her mark.

Much has changed in the four decades since Ms Rousseff was imprisoned for her activities as a Marxist guerrilla involved in the resistance to the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985.

But as well as deciding how to deal with what her finance minister has called a "currency war" and considering whether to push harder for a permanent UN Security Council seat, Ms Rousseff will also know that much of the world still needs convincing that Brazil is a safe country.

With the World Cup to be held in Brazil shortly before the end of her four-year term and the Olympics potentially falling midway through her second term if she were re-elected, the stakes for Ms Rousseff are certainly high.

Born in December 1947 in Belo Horizonte, in the coffee-growing state of Minas Gerais, Ms Rousseff had a middle-class upbringing.

Her father, a Bulgarian immigrant, was a lawyer and entrepreneur and her Brazilian mother was a teacher.

As a student she developed an interest in left-wing politics and became heavily involved in the underground resistance to the country´s military rulers alongside her first husband.

She was captured and jailed early in 1970 and was subjected to electric shocks and beatings while serving her sentence before being released at the end of 1972 and going on to study economics before becoming a career civil servant.

She served as energy minister and then President Lula's chief of staff from 2005 until stepping down to run as the presidential candidate of the Workers' Party earlier this year.

Ms Rousseff, 62, was little known to her compatriots until President Lula selected her as his favoured successor after a number of high-profile candidates were forced out by corruption scandals during his time in office.

She attempted to soften her image during her election campaign, replacing glasses with contact lenses, undergoing plastic surgery to her face and adopting a different hairstyle.

After failing to secure outright victory in the first round of the presidential vote, her lead in the polls over Jose Serra briefly narrowed to as little as four points.

But she was finally elected on October 31 with 56 per cent of the vote against 44 per cent for Mr Serra.

Political commentators believe she will find it difficult to emulate the international influence of President Lula, who Barack Obama once called "the most popular politician on earth."

But if she can continue Brazil's economic success and help pave the way for the world to see the best of Brazil in the World Cup and Olympics then she will perhaps have disproved the critics who saw her rise to the presidency purely as a public endorsement of President Lula's chosen successor.